Here is a poem I wrote over the last year, prompted by a walk along one of the most popular walks in Melbourne, the thousand steps walk in Ferntree Gully National park. This national park was one of the first in Australia and dates from the nineteenth century. The thousand steps walk is popular as a fitness challenge, and to prepare people for walking on overseas travels. It features along its way markers of the Kokoda Track, and so serves as a kind of walking meditation on sacrifice in war.
One Thousand Steps
Moss covered log
Lichen robed manna moist
You fell here too
At some unstressed time
About half way up to one tree hill
Beyond the battles inscribed in this journey
Near the pass and the crossing, nameless now,
The end still one thousand breaths away
Still but never in silence
The log allowed the moss to grow
To make evergreen ears in the thousands
And here to attend to the forest fall
Near vertical lines screen all
But glimpses of the strangers’ city
In this percussive forest of symbols
And to my eyes so is all I see
Notwithstanding the city ken
Cockatoos white and black
Scream their way to Walhalla
An engine whines its solitary death
And the lyre parodies the rancour
Of sports militias training up and down
In their industrial silks
Barely forgiving the mindful walkers
But alone on this wryly named hill
With its scraped bald pate
Two workmen lunch in silent high-vis vests
And two walkers stop for rest
And learn to listen
Jeff Rich
